Low power and Lossy Networks (LLNs), e.g., sensor networks, have a myriad of applications, such as Smart Grid and Smart Cities. Various challenges are presented with LLNs, such as lossy links, low bandwidth, battery operation, low memory and/or processing capability, etc. One example routing protocol for LLN networks is a protocol called Routing Protocol for LLNs or “RPL,” which is a distance vector routing protocol that builds a Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG, or simply DAG) in addition to a set of features to bound the control traffic, support local (and slow) repair, etc. The RPL architecture provides a flexible method by which each node performs DODAG discovery, construction, and maintenance.
In particular, RPL provides various modes of operation for maintaining routes to destinations. With respect to a non-storing mode, RPL source devices add source route header information to messages. This source route header information increases as a function of a length of a particular route to a destination. In turn, the header overhead can prove non-trivial for remote destinations that are interconnected via multiple intermediate nodes routes, which results in an increased burden on network resources required to relay the increased header overhead.